"One of my favorite novels, William Faulkner's "Light in August' include a depiction of a village in the American South, which for eleven days in August only is swathed in an exquisite, spiritual kind of light that wraps the entire village in an indescribable atmosphere. That village is of course a fictional place that Faulkner has made up, as is certainly also the phenomenon of light he describes.However, I remember feeling totally enveloped and dazzled by that light myself while reading the novel for the first time.

I visited Okinawa for the first time in 1974.It was a short one-week stay together with some of my senior photographers, and for some reason I kept sensing that very same dazzling light there right rom the time of my arrival up to the departure. As it engraved in my memory, the sensation of that somewhat “physiological" light keeps coming back to me every time I return to Okinawa still today. In other words, no matter what other factors may come into play, what I associate with Okinawa is first and foremost a very personal condition of being irradiated and embraced by "light”.The light in the back-alleys of Naha; the light that completely environs a certain beach; the light that illuminates the avenues around the military base; and the light that showers the gusuku (castle) hills. To me, the light of Okinawa always presents itself with a particular kind of quality.It is perhaps a matter of reasonably abstracted sensuality.Mesmerized by the light, and by the wind.."